Understanding the Style Palette

- Styles are what makes everything in your InfraWorks modellook the way it does.So if you master styles, you can master the appearanceof your model.Let's get started in our discussion of stylesby looking at the style palette.I want to start by showing youhow to open the style palette.It actually can be done in a couple of different locations.If I expand the InfraWorks core tools,the first place I'll find the style paletteis on the managed toolbar.You can see it right here.I can also locate it from the create toolbar.

You can see it here, so it must be a pretty important itemif it's located in more than one place.When we click the style palette icon,it brings up the STYLE PALETTE paneland it's arranged in a series of tabs,section, and there's an individual style section.The tabs give you access to different types of styles.Some of these you've gotten a brief look atthroughout some of the videos leading up till now.We've worked with Barrier objects,Coverage objects, and quite a few of these other tabsas well, and as I click through the tabsyou'll see different stylesthat apply to that type of object.

For some style types there are so many stylesthat they're organized into catalogs.For example, let's take a look at Facade styles.There are facade styles in a Brick catalog,Concrete and you can't really read that name,so what could I do for that?Actually, there's a drop down here where I can controlthe display and I'll switch it to Icon List.Now we can see it says Concrete & Glass,Marble & Stone, and so on.Inside each of these catalogs if I double-click a catalogthis is where the actual styles resideand you'll find that most of the style types havecatalogs within them.

Catalogs are like folders that contain styles.As I said, we've got tabs for different types of styles,we've got catalogs for some of them within the tabs,and these buttons across the topare for doing certain functions with catalogs.For example, I can create new catalogs.I can delete ones that are here now.I can even import and export entire catalogs.One thing about styles is that they're storedwithin a given model, so if I create a bunch of cool stylesin this model and I want to use them in another model,then I can export them from hereand import them into the other model.

I can also copy catalogs and I can also rename them.There are some rules about what I can do with duplicatingand renaming catalogs.Right now I've got this master catalog called Materialselected as the current catalog.Don't be confused by this selection here.This is the current catalog right now.If I tried to copy or rename this catalog,it's not going to let me.The copy option is just simply disabledand the rename option will give me a warning herethat says that I can't rename a root style catalog.

If I dig down a level into Bikepath,this isn't considered a root level catalog.It's under a root level catalogand I get access to the duplicate and rename functions here,so you can do just about anything,but you can't change those root catalogs.You can't rename them or delete them.Now if we look at this area down at the bottom,this is for dealing with individual styles.So if I choose a style, I can edit it, I can rename it,I can copy it into the current catalog,or I can copy it into another catalog.

I can also delete it.I can also create brand new stylesby clicking the green plus sign.Again, we've got functions at the top for managing catalogs,and then functions at the bottom for managingthe individual styles within those catalogs.Of course, the best feature ofthe style palette is that I can drag and drop stylesright from the style palette right onto objects in model.For example, if I wanna change the style of this house,this happens to be a 3D model style.

I'll go into the Buildings catalog,and then the Residential catalog,and here I see an assortment of house stylesthat I can pick from.I'll just drag and drop one right onto that house,and just like that the style changes.That little trick I can do with just about any objectin InfraWorks by simply dragging and droppingthe style from the style palette onto the object.So now that you've seen the style palette,you understand a bit about how InfraWorks thinksabout styles and you're now ready to begincreating and modifying styles of your ownand really getting control of your InfraWorks world.

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Author

Released

6/9/2015

Learn to create new worlds inside InfraWorks 360, the exciting new design and engineering program that gives your projects 3D, real-world context. Eric Chappell gets you up to speed with all the essential features of InfraWorks 360 while you follow along creating a full-featured residential community in Southern California. He shows how to import model and terrain data from other programs and add style and detail (such as trees, water, sky, and roads) to your world. He'll also help you analyze, visualize, and share your design with colleagues and clients around the globe.